a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

More documents

Recommendations

Info

models, such as what outcomes are associated with having role models, what characteristics or attributes are related to an employee being perceived as a role model, how many role models do employees have, whether or not role models are influential with respect to certain outcomes, etc. Finally, this research has important implications for reciprocity and social exchange in organizations. The norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) provides the basis for many conceptualizations of social exchange. When a person does a favor for another person, it is expected that the person receiving the favor will help the person who helped them. Gouldner argues that reciprocity, the belief that people should help (and not injure) those who help them, is a generalized moral norm. Further, Gouldner makes predictions as to what conditions make it more or less likely that the favor will be reciprocated. He argues that repayment of a favor is contingent upon the perceived value of the benefit received, the intensity of the recipient’s need, the motive attributed to the donor, and the nature of the constraints that are perceived to exist. When a favor provided by another is believed to be valuable, discretionary, and provided despite constraints, that favor is more likely to be repaid. The results of this research suggest that social influence can have an important effect on beliefs about reciprocity, particularly concerning beliefs about obligations of repayment as specified by Gouldner (1960). Employees’ social ties may influence employees’ beliefs regarding whether or not the treatment provided by the organization is positive or negative. Objective information regarding the value of treatment provided by the organization is generally, if not always, unavailable. Employees turn to social relationships in order to determine whether or not the treatment that they receive from the organization is favorable or unfavorable. Further, the fact that social relationships characterized by mutual information exchange were most strongly associated with similarity in POS may not be surprising given that the 91
theoretical foundation of POS is social exchange. Employees who exchange information may have higher POS because of this exchange of information with coworkers. This effect could be accentuated if employees feel that coworkers are representatives of the organization. In addition to conceptual and theoretical implications, this dissertation has practical implications for managers. While many organizations view the employer-employee relationship as solely a dyadic relationship, our findings indicate that this relationship is more complex. Therefore, companies must be concerned not just with how they treat individual workers, but rather with how they treat all workers in the organization. Even small numbers of employees who believe that the organization does not support them, if those employees are widely regarded as role models, could lead to a pervasive belief among other organizational members that the organization does not care for the well-being or value the contributions of employees. For example, when the organization fails to support an employee who is regarded as a role model and frequently provides advice to other employees, this employee’s beliefs that the organization is unsupportive may spread throughout the organization. However, if this employee feels supported, a multiplicative effect may pervade the organization, and employees who have lower POS will adjust their perceptions of support to be consistent with the focal advice-providing employee. This suggests that managers should pay close attention to how they handle situations which could create low POS among employees, such as downsizing and pay cuts. Perhaps managers should do their best to ensure that the organization’s role models maintain their beliefs about organizational support. If this is impossible, managers should at least ensure that highly influential employees understand that the negative treatment that they are providing is beyond their control so that the POS of these employees is not damaged to a great extent. 92
Page 1 and 2:
TITLE PAGE A SOCIAL INFLUENCE ANALY
Page 3 and 4:
Copyright by Thomas J. Zagenczyk 20
Page 5 and 6:
with the expectation that reciproca
Page 7 and 8:
LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Hypothesize
Page 9 and 10:
PREFACE Thank you to my chair, Audr
Page 11 and 12:
epresentatives of the organization
Page 13 and 14:
Researchers also consider the conte
Page 15 and 16:
Exploring the effects of social inf
Page 17 and 18:
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Orga
Page 19 and 20:
Levinson’s work explained the lar
Page 21 and 22:
Eisenberger and colleagues (1986) a
Page 23 and 24:
In subsequent studies, researchers
Page 25 and 26:
the organization is based on percei
Page 27 and 28:
esearch exploring the antecedents o
Page 29 and 30:
a manager with high formal status s
Page 31 and 32:
to carry out tasks on their own, an
Page 33 and 34:
occurs because the norm of reciproc
Page 35 and 36:
on their daily tasks. Examining thi
Page 37 and 38:
coworkers are able to provide infor
Page 39 and 40:
when forming perceptions and evalua
Page 41 and 42:
identifies with and interacts with
Page 43 and 44:
Miles, and Grover (2003) showed tha
Page 45 and 46:
instance, a researcher may find a p
Page 47 and 48:
likely to discuss sensitive issues
Page 49 and 50: it does not require that the role m
Page 51 and 52: among tellers. In one branch, no se
Page 53 and 54: eside outside of the focal individu
Page 55 and 56: To test the effects of social influ
Page 57 and 58: disseminating organizational inform
Page 59 and 60: less positive. Thus, the POS of the
Page 61 and 62: ties (and other combinations of str
Page 63 and 64: Research Setting Hypotheses were te
Page 65 and 66: network data concerning recurring i
Page 67 and 68: I explored these different requirem
Page 69 and 70: or not the employees with whom they
Page 71 and 72: frequent contact with person j, or
Page 73 and 74: employee held a leadership position
Page 75 and 76: correlation analysis has two steps.
Page 77 and 78: Organizational Support was .84, whi
Page 79 and 80: Table 5: Descriptive Statistics for
Page 81 and 82: Correlations. Two different types o
Page 83 and 84: Control Variables Table 7: Pearson
Page 85 and 86: Control Variables Table 9: Pearson
Page 87 and 88: Results of Hypotheses Tests using Q
Page 89 and 90: positions had perceptions of organi
Page 91 and 92: CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLU
Page 93 and 94: elationship may not have been consi
Page 95 and 96: social learning theory (Bandura, 19
Page 97 and 98: to provide false information is les
Page 99: Fourth, when studying social influe
Page 103 and 104: consistent with past research (Ibar
Page 105 and 106: employees who were widely regarded
Page 107 and 108: etween employees, only strong frien
Page 109 and 110: of structure and behavior. Academy
Page 111 and 112: organizational support. In J. A-M.
Page 113 and 114: Hammer, M. (1985). Implications of
Page 115 and 116: Kohlberg, L. (1963). Moral developm
Page 117 and 118: Mehra, A., Kilduff, M., & Brass, D.
Page 119 and 120: Rogers, E.M. (1995). Diffusion of i
Page 121 and 122: networks: An introduction to Markov
Page 123 and 124: Name of employee Yes Yes No No Name
show all

a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?